Off Topic: Phil Galfond takes a beating; Tom Dwan flies to Japan; Rob Yong sees Sunday crash

The big news in recent weeks has been the upcoming challenge between Phil Galfond and the first of his opponents, Venividi93. The match has begun, and potentially ended with a shocking sequence of early losses. Meanwhile, Tom Dwan has been skiing in Japan, causing jungleman to question why he is putting his feet on ice when he should be taking their challenge off it, and Rob Yong has been watching Sunday crash and burn on partypoker.

Galfond crushed

Galfond’s challenge which was issued to the poker world has been hotly debated, and while views were put forward on who might win – nobody expected Galfond to be down around $1 million after 15 sessions. In the wake of such a beating in the early exchanges, Galfond is taking a break until March 1st, and has admitted he may even surrender and pay Venividi93 off. The exact sum of his losses is around €900,000, with an extra €3,000 per day loss agreed for Galfond’s requested break until the end of the month.

Unfortunately, my downswing in the first #GalfondChallenge has very much continued.

I’m taking a step back to do some thinking. Here’s an update, along with some more of my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/jIcN4Bc1Jz

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) February 11, 2020

Just under 10,000 hands of a scheduled 25,000 hand match have been played, and things are looking grim for Galfond. Most agree that victory in this war of attrition is now beyond him, but he still has the question of pride and reputation to consider. As a poker coach who now runs his own online poker room, his main concern now appears to be making sure he is not publicly humiliated. Admitting defeat will cause that to happen to some degree but continuing may result in a huge seven-figure loss if he completes the challenge.

Tom Dwan hits the slopes in Japan

Tom Dwan announced his latest plans on Twitter earlier this month, and much to the annoyance of Daniel ‘jungleman’ Cates, it wasn’t to sit down and finish a challenge against his nemesis which has been rolling on for a decade. Instead, Dwan decided on skiing in Japan with high stakes regular Rui Cao.

Ski with fish @TomDwan pic.twitter.com/GpXTbzJWlh

— Rui Cao (@RuiCaoCooler) January 30, 2020

After taking in the sights of mountains regions Hokkaido island and enjoying the slopes, Dwan finally decided to get around to what needed to be done. That, of course, was to jet off to London for a gaming convention.

Tweeting about his next trip, Dwan outlined his next destination, where he met up with Stanley Choi for the London convention which showcases the latest in innovative gaming. Predictably, jungleman was not pleased, responding on Twitter with what must be his three hundredth reminder message to Dwan since the challenge began.

Partypoker drops the ball

Sunday’s tournament schedule on partypoker has been carefully nurtured in recent times, as the poker room seeks to depose PokerStars as the king of online tournament poker. While many would argue that PokerStars’ policies in the last few years may have helped their rival, partypoker’s system reliability issues have left them struggling to take advantage.

The partypoker million flagship tournament has only been in existence since November, and yet, Sunday marked the second time it has been cancelled due to technical issues. After initially pausing play to try to resolve the problem, the site eventually announced that all tournaments for the day were cancelled.

For tournaments in play, which included the partypoker million, funds would be distributed according to the rules of cancelled tournaments. Rob Young took to Twitter later that day to make his apologies to the players.

Sorry for lack of replies, had some jetlag. I cant keep apologising for these crashes ⁦@partypoker⁩ but I will go and see ⁦@tom_waters⁩ on Tuesday and report back to you what the plan is to become a lot more stable 🤮 pic.twitter.com/incQxCUB6c

— Rob Yong (@rob_yong_) February 10, 2020

That may have been an important and expected thing to do, but if technical calamities like this become any more frequent, apologies will soon cease to suffice.